Sam Mullins

Same here!

Given the Saudi involvement, it’s kinda like Premier league soccer

I don’t think GHSA is a thing. Google has hits in Sweetwater but I think that’s a typo. Official Yamaha docs say GHS for CK88. Having said that many people have noted differences among Yamaha models that all supposedly have GHS action.

This is the main reason I chose the CK88 over YC73; just covered a lot more of the sonic territory I needed for my use case. Would have loved the better organ, build and action but in the end the sound variety won out.

Two experiences which may or may not be relevant: - when I accidentally unplug CCK from iPad and then plug it back in, I sometimes notice that iOS sees the keys (CK88 and Keylab) plugged back in, but Camelot shows them still disabled and I have to manually enable. But not all the time. In any case, if it’s set up and nothing like a cable disconnect happens, then everything seems to stay active. - When I first got my Arturia Keylab, I was trying to power it using a cheap USB hub that had some sort of “smarts” where it would try to detect which ports needed more power and provide it there. So the Keylab would be OK, then I would plug in something else (or disconnect and reconnect the iPad) and then it would lose power. So I ordered a better (around $50) 60W USB hub that provided 1.5 A on all ports and haven’t had any problems since then.

I am letting Camelot Pro launch everything for each song; I don’t launch anything manually. Possibly related to your question, there is a configuration item on Camelot to “enable plugin reuse between songs”. To add to this: I just tried launching B-3X manually and then running Camelot Pro with a program using B-3X. Camelot isn’t using the manually launched instance; it’s using the Auv3 plugin instance. They both seemed to work, but don’t know if there would be any unanticipated interactions.

Since there has been a lot of discussion here about the pros/cons of an iPad based rig, I thought I would relay my experience. Disclaimer: I’m not an evangelist on this issue; I think everyone’s use case is different: required functionality, acceptable risk, etc. History: I play in a duo with my brother and we cover a pretty wide variety of rock/pop (everything from Beatles to Fiona Apple to Depeche Mode). For the last 5 years, my rig has been a Nord Stage 3 and a Korg Kronos 61, midi’d to each other. Many songs are simple from a sound perspective: piano, piano and organ, bass and epiano, etc. But about 25% involve more complicated splits across two keyboards (sometimes as many as 8-10 splits). For the vast majority of non-piano and non-organ sounds, I use the Kronos (played from either keyboard). To be clear, this setup has worked great for me and I have had no reliability issues (maybe a half dozen random reboots of the Kronos over the years) A couple months ago I embarked on a project to replace above with: Yamaha CK 88 Arturia Keylab MkII iPad + apps (Camelot Pro using mostly Korg Module, B-3x, Neo-Soul Keys, Ravenscroft, Pure Synth Platinum, Moog Model D and Arturia iSEM) Given what I said about my existing rig, you may ask why? Fair enough: Reduce weight. I’m in good shape, but I’m approaching retirement age and thought it was time to face the future reality of what I can haul. Stage 3/hard case -> CK88/hard case went from 63 to 50 pounds. Kronos/hard case -> Arturia/soft case went from 54 to 17 pounds (big win) Kronos screen: I used and loved the set list feature, with notes for chord changes and lyric hints. But I had a hard time reading the small print 5 years ago and was rapidly approaching it being unusable. The Stage was overkill for what I used it for (piano, wurly and organ). I never cared for the Nord Rhodes sounds and rarely used the synth. Given the price increases on Nord, I thought it was a good time to sell (and indeed I sold it for about $600 less than I paid 6 years ago) Many have voiced justifiable concerns about relying on an iPad in this thread. Here is the risk mitigation strategy I am following to allow this change: I can play 75% of our songs with the CK88 if necessary. So worst case is we have a narrower set list stylistically. I have an iPad Pro and an iPad mini. Whenever I change something in Camelot Pro, at the end of the session I back it all up to iCloud and it is available to import on the iPad mini. If there is an iOS or app upgrade I do it on the iPad Pro and check everything out thoroughly and wait for many days prior to upgrading the iPad mini. If there is a gig coming up, I would wait until after the gig before trying any upgrades. I bring both iPad’s to the gig; they have different CCK (Thunderbolt vs. lightning). So if the CCK fails, I would simply use the other iPad. I have a nice high quality USB hub (mounted on my pedal board) that has full power on every USB connector. But I also carry an old leftover cheap USB hub as a backup. So I’m obviously exerting some effort to avoid the likelihood of a software issue at some point. I have no illusions on this point; I’ve already been through a problem on Pure Synth Platinum that would have made it unusable on a gig. It has been fixed, but I’m keeping a close eye on that app and only using it on a couple songs currently. On the other hand, I have a full iPad backup for the non-CK sounds; if my Kronos had ever died, then I would have been out of luck for those sounds. I had my first gig last night and everything went fine. Three hour-long sets and no glitches. There are a few sounds that I used on my Kronos that I haven’t found equals to yet on iOS…but that’s more a function of time investment. On the other hand, B-3X is inarguably superior to the Stage organs. So like with any gear swap, there are trade offs. I will likely keep my Kronos around for a few months to make sure I’m still good with this approach. If I have to go back to it, then duplicating what I was doing on the Stage with the CK88 will be easy. In the meantime, I’m loving the reduced weight. Even the 13 pounds for the lower keyboard seemed significant. Sorry for the long post, but I always find it useful when others post their use case details so thought I would contribute mine.

Yes it was DS88. These things are personal taste but I found it sluggish and sloppy. MODX8+ supposedly has same GHS action as CK88. As others have noted there seems to be some variability across Yamaha models that have GHS. But my casual observation was that these two were close.

Yes. Thanks for the heads up. I have my first gig with iPad rig Friday and this would’ve been a big problem. (although presumably my backup iPad mini would’ve been unaffected). It might be useful to have an ongoing thread where people warn of ios or music app upgrade problems.

I’ve had my CK88 for a few weeks and was ok but not thrilled with action. But was in chicago this weekend, went to guitar center and tried out much of the competition in this price range and have to say I’m happy with my decision. The Roland offerings ( fantom and a juno) were particularly awful in comparison IMO .

Many years ago, my eldest son was in junior high (prime Weird Al age) and begged to go to a show. So (on my wife's birthday no less), the family drove to Davenport for the show. Not only one of the more memorable concerts I've been to, but also one of our favorite family memories. My younger son was 10ish and had never seen a spectacle like this (big screen videos, lasers, fog, etc) and his eyes were like saucers. Making me smile just thinking about it.

The reliability thing is complicated. Next week, I will be playing my first gig with a new rig that incorporates an iPad (CK88/Arturia KeyLab/iPad). For several years I have been using a Kronos/Stage 3 combo with the vast majority of the non-keyboard sounds from the Kronos. It has been rock solid. In the new rig, many of those sounds will be covered by iPad apps. Your points about apps going away is valid and something I've tried to account for (use apps that I think are likely to have longer lifetime, e.g. Module) On the other hand, if my Kronos had ever failed, I would have been SOL for those songs which required it. At least in the new rig, I can have a complete backup of my stuff on the iPad (Camelot Pro and a few apps) and use another iPad I have. So in that way, it is more reliable. (I also intend to keep backup iPad on "old" ios and app versions until I verify everything works on primary iPad).

B-3X sounds great. I find the "admin" functions lacking, specifically: - doesn't appear to be any way to back up your entire setup (main config and presets). (See my related thread on this issue) So restoring on another iPad (for backup safety) is not possible. You can "share" a preset and then air drop it to the other iPad, but seems like a silly methodology compared to other ios music apps, e.g. on Pure Synth Platinum, you have dedicated backup/restore buttons that will save to iCloud folder...so hit backup button on primary iPad and then restore button (with drop down of file choices) on backup iPad. Easy peasy - You can't store a "profile" of your config settings. So you can't have two different controllers that had MIDI mapped differently and call up the appropriate settings. Would love to be wrong about either of these.

Yeah. I can share preset to a folder on ICloud. I see the file using Files app from both iPads. So getting the files shared at an OS level is not the problem. But I don’t have an option to open it in B-3x. UPDATE: Tried your air drop method and it worked! (I.e. share to file, air drop to backup iPad and accept using B-3x app not Files app). Thanks much! editorial: this seems unnecessarily complicated. The other iOS music apps are much more straightforward to backup and restore. Unfortunately consistent with my other experiences on IK Multimedia products, some cool technology hampered by some strange choices.

Thanks. I assumed it would be something like this. But under “On my iPad” there is no B-3X (or anything similar) folder. And I have several presets saved. 🤔

Thanks for quick reply. Unfortunately that won’t work in this situation. Primary Is iPad Pro (3rd gen M1) shared with my wife and backup is iPad mini 5 that I bought years earlier for music only. Much as I love my 4 year old granddaughter, I don’t need the thousands of pix of her on my mini 😃 ( or my wife’s email and recipes and texts etc) obviously it would be preferable to have the dedicated music iPad as primary but that M1 processor handles the CPU load much easier.

I would like to backup my B-3x settings from my primary to my backup iPad. Both are on same Apple ID and B-3x is registered on both. Ideally I would like to backup everything to one file on iCloud and restore from that. I don’t see an option to do this so next best would be to transfer one preset at a time. I can save a preset to iCloud folder. But I don’t get option to import preset on backup iPad I can click on the file on the backup iPad and it opens B-3x but does not import preset. Hopefully, I’m missing something obvious. Any enlightenment?

I’ve mentioned at least a couple times that my brother is in a long time popular covers band in Eastern Iowa. He’s been doing it since college (late 80s) and 10 years ago they got inducted into the Iowa Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (I know … big fish, small pond…but our mother was very proud ). A typical gig for them is a a couple hundred people but they play summer events where I’ve seen many thousand. Mostly brewery, winery gigs (early hours!) these days. Anyway in the last couple years they started doing a few shows at this farm where the owners take nothing, give all the cover to bands, BYOB. Today weather was threatening so they moved it into the barn. Very small crowd (20 people). But the acoustics were fantastic (best I’ve ever heard them in 30 years ) and the 20 audience members were enthralled. Brought tears to my eyes even though I’ve heard these songs hundreds of times. And they had a blast (and won’t make squat) So in that spirit, let’s hear about your unexpectedly joyous gigs.

one more from the 21st century: Lake Street Dive Love: You Go Down Smooth Like: Rental Love Hate: Good Kisser

Queen (all from one record): Love: Death on Two Legs LIke: You're My Best Friend Hate: I'm in Love with My Car

Joni Mitchell Love: 80%, e.g. all of Court and Spark and Hissing of Summer Lawns Like: Wild Things Run Fast Hate: The Circle Game (OK...hate is a bit strong, more like don't like)

Or (as I suggested to them many years ago), simply turn the LED's off when in "arbitrary split" mode. Wouldn't be any different than almost every keyboard in that case.

I doubt it is the controller. But this is easily verified using a tool like midi wrench. (Don’t know if it’s available on Android but if not I’m assuming there is an equivalent tool)

Yes, if you want to practice or perform for 10 people in a living room. For a coffee shop gig (with background noise), I would say no.